


I feel like my whole life is packed away in boxes

by Necromommycon



Category: Community
Genre: Dreamatorium, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2012-12-19
Packaged: 2017-11-21 14:21:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/598746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Necromommycon/pseuds/Necromommycon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Troy and Abed offer to help Britta unpack a few things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I feel like my whole life is packed away in boxes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [77sparks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/77sparks/gifts).



"I feel like my whole life is packed away in boxes," Annie said mournfully.

"It is." Britta eyed the neatly stacked boxes. "Well-labeled boxes. Are those content lists color-coordinated?"

"Well, yeah." Annie shrugged this away with the pleased but embarrassed expression of someone receiving a compliment. Britta, who'd meant it as a criticism, frowned.

"You could kind of keep an eye on my stuff," Annie suggested, and then added hastily, "not all the time or anything. You have your life, and, uh, cats. But once in a while maybe you could crash here, and see how things are going?" She looked so hopeful that Britta had agreed before even deciding how she felt about sleeping in Annie's well-made, aggressively pretty bed.

"Tell me again why you're doing this?"

"My job placement doesn't start until the end of November," Annie said, immediately defensive. "So this is my chance to break loose. To go wild. To have a gap year." She'd picked up this last phrase from Pierce, and had been using it defiantly ever since Jeff had dismissed it as "just another 'streets ahead,' and it's not going to happen." Jeff, who wasn't even enrolled in Greendale anymore (Annie was loyally doing an online course she didn't even need); Jeff, who'd waltzed back into his firm and already had not just Pierce and Shirley but several of his former accounts as well, and was by all accounts (well, his own) walking all over Alan; Jeff, who'd lost all right to criticize actual study group members, as far as Annie was concerned.

Britta was staring at her worriedly, and Annie realized she might have said some of that out loud.

"Anyway, it'll be cool," she said hastily. "Abed and Troy and you. You're all still full time students. You can do full time student stuff. Like drinking, and watching Inspector Spacetime, and counting my boxes twice a week to make sure nothing's been stolen, and maybe rotating them so none of them grow mold?" 

"Sure." Britta sounded doubtful but willing. "That could be fun. I guess." She turned to look at Abed, who was standing in the doorway in full Inspector costume, and aimed her most empathetic yet professional psychology major voice at him. "How do you feel about that, Abed?"

"Do whatever you like," he said. "It's Annie's bedroom, not mine." 

Not exactly welcoming, Britta thought, but then he was probably under a lot of stress. Dismantling the dreamatorium so he and Troy could move the bunk beds in and use the second bedroom had to have been a major adjustment. "How's the new bedroom working out?" she asked, giving him a significant look.

He looked baffled. "It's a bedroom," he said finally. "It's good." She was still giving him that look, so he tried again. "Would you like to see it?"

The new bedroom looked just like the blanket fort, but less billowy. Britta paced around, nodding approvingly, and then stood leaning one hand on the wall. "I like it. Very...collegiate."

"Except for the absence of books," Annie said primly, and a little disapprovingly.

Abed shrugged. "It's a dead medium. We've moved on."

"Yeah, Annie," Britta said. "We've moved on. We can't all be virgin werewolf schoolmarms."

"That was just entertaining fiction," Annie said, her voice just shrill enough to be at at odds with her actual words. "I didn't mean any of it!"

"Oh good," Britta shot back. "So especially not the part where I'm a--what was it? A drained and tainted bitchdog?"

"At least I didn't provide a running feminist critique of the guy I was about to order out of the car to get mangled by a hook!"

"Uh, guys?" Abed interrupted. "You're too close to the wall. You need to back off a bit, maybe stand in the center of the room? Maybe get out of here altogether, go hang out in the living room."

"Wow," Britta said, pulling her hand back. "That is one intense wall." 

"Of course it is," Abed said smoothly, coming to stand between them. "Don't forget, this was the Dreamatorium. There could be residual elements of imaginated landscapes here, especially of unresolved renderings."

"Uh huh," said Britta, that significant look back again. "Or unresolved emotions, right, Abed?"

He looked confused, then switched on an alarmingly confident smile, something just south of Don Draper. "Isn't that what therapy is for, Britta?"

She smiled back, delighted. "Yes! Yes, it is, Abed. I'm happy you agree about that."

Annie, recognizing the hint of Draper, narrowed her eyes. "You're still letting Britta practice on you?" She tried to say that in a way that wouldn't make Britta feel criticized, but Britta, still glowing over what she'd obviously thought was a compliment from Abed, was barely listening.

"Why not?" Abed asked, widening his eyes. "I trust her to do her best." Britta almost caught the undertone that time; at least, she stopped beaming and narrowed her eyes at him too. 

"Like the time you trusted me to sing the lead at the Christmas pageant, when really you were just using me to derail Mr. Rad's scheme? Is that all I am to you, Abed? Just a cog in your machine?" Her voice went shrill at the end. Britta's patented manufactured dissent, Abed thought, and felt strangely disappointed at the pretense of it all.

There was an awkward pause. "Uh. He said your hair was shiny?" Annie offered. Britta considered this.

"And that your face was symmetrical," Abed remembered helpfully. "It's very comforting. At least, I assume it would be to your fiancé if you had one."

"That's right," Britta said, her eyes distant. "You paired us up in your story." She was too lost in thought to even try to sound analyse-y.

"So you'll stay here, then?" Annie asked. "At least some of the time when I'm away?"

"Sure," Britta said absently. "I said I would."

"Cool," Abed whispered quietly. "Cool cool cool."

 

Britta couldn’t let it go. Of course. Three nights later Annie was gone, off having adventures or whatever it was she was doing, and Britta was sitting in Troy and Abed’s apartment, eating green tea ice cream and rehashing the whole thing. “It was such a stupid argument,” she said.

“Yeah,” they answered in weary unison.

“I mean, I don’t want Jeff, and I’m pretty sure Annie doesn’t want him either, so why are we still bickering about him? Why did either of us even include him in our stupid scary stories?”

Abed answered without looking away from the television. “Jeff is the way you keep score. You two are still competing with each other, and he’s like currency: worthless in itself, but useful as an agreed-upon shorthand for assigning value.”

“Impressive,” she said thoughtfully. “I feel like I should have spotted that myself. There’s probably a name for it.”

“There are probably lots of names for it,” Troy said dryly, “but I don’t think you’d like hearing them.”

 

The next night she showed up again, and this time the blanket fort was back in the living room. “Guys?” she asked.

“We decided to restore the dreamatorium,” Abed said. “There are risks, but I can live with them.” He stroked his chin thoughtfully, almost as if he could feel a nonexistent goatee.

Britta made her psychology face. “Isn’t this a step backward for you?”

Abed shook his head. “It’s not for me. It’s for you. Obviously you have stuff you need to work out.”

“Even if I did—and I don’t—I don’t think playing pretend would help me. Or interest me, even.”

“You only say that because you don’t understand how the dreamatorium works.” Abed threw open the door, revealing the familiar, unsettling grid. “Think of all the other outcomes to the things that have happened to you, Britta. Aren’t you curious as to how things might have played out?”

“No,” she said, less firmly than she wanted to.

“What if Subway hadn’t been removed from the campus? What if you’d done something really illegal and Chang had had you arrested? What if you dyed your hair? What if you didn’t choose scummy men?”

“I don’t need to know any of those things,” she said uncertainly, “because that’s not the life I’m living.”

“Don’t be so quick to compartmentalize,” Abed told her seriously. “You’d be surprised how much stuff leaks over.” 

“Besides,” Troy said, taking her by the elbow and steering her closer to the room, “you’re safe. You’re with friends.”

“All right.” She looked startled to be agreeing. “Let’s go unpack a few issues. Not that I have any.” 

“Of course you don’t,” Abed said soothingly.


End file.
